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University selects Beyer Blinder Belle to develop campus plan

Posted September 29, 2005; 07:00 a.m.

by Ruth Stevens

Princeton University has chosen the award-winning firm of Beyer
Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP to lead the development of a
long-term plan for its campus.

Working with a team of seven other specialized firms, BBB will take a
fresh look at the 400-acre campus and outline how it might grow in the
future. The project is particularly challenging since Princeton is in
the midst of an ambitious building program.

"Under the leadership of President [Shirley M.] Tilghman, we have
engaged in an intensive series of internal discussions over the past
two years with senior administrators, faculty, architects and other key
stakeholders through which we have developed a set of overarching
principles for campus planning and development," said Mark Burstein,
executive vice president at Princeton. "Now we will work with BBB to
develop a plan for applying these principles to specific decisions we
will need to make not only about where to locate new facilities but
also about parking, transportation, pedestrian access and circulation,
infrastructure support, signage, landscaping and other issues."

A firm of 160 professionals with offices in New York City, Washington,
D.C., and Beijing, China, BBB is well known for urban planning and
creative integration of new design within the historic fabric of
buildings, cities and landscapes. Its projects have included a vision
plan for Washington, D.C., and downtown revitalization plans in
Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The firm also
has prepared long-term campus plans for several other institutions,
including the State University of New York-Stony Brook, Columbia
University and the eight-campus Indiana University system. Other
notable projects for which the firm has been responsible include the
revitalization of historic sites such as Grand Central Terminal and the
Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (in association with Renzo Piano
Building Workshop). In 1995, BBB received the Firm Award from the
American Institute of Architects, the profession's highest honor.

"The culture of our firm is rooted in a sensitivity to the value of
important public places, cultural and historic settings, and landmarks,
while also planning and designing vibrant and exciting new places,"
said Neil Kittredge, associate partner at BBB, who will be the primary
liaison between the firm and the University. "So Princeton's long-term
campus plan is an ideal project for us. While preserving the qualities
that make the historic campus so beloved, we must also ensure that the
campus can grow and have a thriving ongoing life, by integrating the
new with the old in a coherent whole."

BBB has assembled a team of specialists with whom it will work on various aspects of the plan. The other firms are:

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, landscape architects with offices in New York and Cambridge, Mass.

Architecture Research Office, an architectural design practice
based in New York and founded by two alumni of Princeton's School of
Architecture.

Lynden B. Miller Public Garden Design, a horticulture and garden design firm based in New York.

Gorove/Slade Associates, specialists in traffic and transportation based in Washington, D.C.

Two Twelve Associates, a New York City-based graphic design firm specializing in wayfinding and signage.

Judith Nitsch Engineering, a civil engineering firm in Boston with particular expertise in the field of sustainability.

"BBB put together a very impressive team as part of its proposal," said
Michael McKay, Princeton's vice president for facilities. "They have
worked together often and have good relationships. That's important
because the team here is really key to this process."

"This project requires a firm that will support a collaborative
approach and coordinate lots of inputs from different sources," added
Jon Hlafter, University architect. "We wanted to have a team that would
hit the ground running."

The process of developing the campus plan is expected to take two
years. According to Burstein, it will offer members of the University
and local communities many opportunities for engagement, including
meetings, surveys and other mechanisms.

Kittredge has some personal interest in the community aspect of the
project. He was born in Princeton, grew up in South Brunswick and
worked as a young architect at a Princeton firm. "My experience at
Princeton is from the perspective of a resident of the town," he said.
"I hope that this background will help with the engagement and
understanding of town-gown issues with the many constituencies
necessary for the success of the campus planning effort."

Guiding principles and campus neighborhoods

The planning process is taking place during a 10-year building boom on
Princeton's campus. Some 1.6 million square feet of space will have
been added to the physical plant through new facilities by 2006,
yielding a total physical plant of more than 9.5 million square feet.
University officials estimate that Princeton will require an additional
1 million square feet of space between 2007 and 2017, the period to be
covered by the plan.

During the earlier internal discussions on campus planning, Princeton
officials decided that, for the foreseeable future, the further
expansion would take place on the main campus, rather than on land the
University owns across Lake Carnegie in West Windsor.

"The decision to promote appropriate density on Princeton's core campus
in lieu of continued dispersion heightened the urgency of identifying
the unique qualities of the main campus and of developing a strategy to
preserve and enhance them," Burstein said.

The internal planning process resulted in five guiding principles for future work:

maintain a pedestrian-oriented campus.

preserve the park-like character of the campus.

maintain campus "neighborhoods" while promoting a sense of community.

develop in an environmentally responsible manner.

sustain strong community relations.

Another major factor that will affect the planning process is the
expansion of Princeton's undergraduate student body by 500 students.
The gradual growth has already started with a slight increase in the
size of this year's freshman class. Enrollment is expected to reach
5,200 students in the fall of 2012. To house those students, the
University is constructing Whitman College, its sixth residential
complex. The 255,000-square-foot collegiate gothic structure designed
by Demetri Porphyrios is expected to be ready for occupancy in fall
2007.

Several "neighborhood design" projects also are under way. In May, the
University announced the selection of Hopkins Architects of London for
its new chemistry building and surrounding natural sciences
neighborhood. The other projects the University has identified to
address specific needs for growth and enhance the development of
targeted campus neighborhoods are:

Alexander Street/University Place, where it is exploring options
for developing academic space focused on the arts as well as
residential, office and retail facilities.

"E-3," a zoning district in the borough of Princeton on the
northeast corner of the main campus that comprises the University's
facilities for the applied sciences, social sciences and some natural
sciences. The University is examining options for constructing new
engineering facilities.

Housing, an area where University officials want to explore not
only better meeting the needs of its undergraduate and graduate
students -- most of whom live on campus -- but also faculty and staff.

BBB and its team will be responsible for working with the architects
selected for the neighborhood projects to make sure that their work is
integrated with the campus plan. On the chemistry building and its
neighborhood, for example, the team will be developing a parking plan
that would support University needs while minimizing impact on the
surrounding community and finding ways to improve the environmentally
sensitive wooded stream valley in concert with the construction project.

"The University has adopted an approach of planning complete
neighborhoods, rather than individual buildings, in order to avoid
ending up with a series of projects that are disconnected," Kittredge
said. "This approach will result in a set of unique places that work
together to form the campus, with each neighborhood having its own
character and identity. The planning process will help define what it
means to be a neighborhood, how buildings, open spaces, circulation and
other elements are integrated within each area, and how the various
neighborhoods fit together and relate to the historic campus core."

The BBB team will meet monthly with the University's campus planning
steering committee, which is led by President Tilghman. "In the early
stages, it will be the steering committee providing overall guidance to
the campus planning team," said Hlafter, who will provide day-to-day
supervision along with a new associate University architect. "In the
later stages, it will be the steering committee reacting to
recommendations from the campus planning team."

Developing a campus plan at the same time as the University is
undergoing so much change presents a particular set of challenges for
BBB. But Kittredge finds the prospect stimulating. "We hope to create a
flexible framework that can be more dynamic than a traditional master
plan," he said. "With a static plan, you can become very abstract and
lose sight of the fact that needs change over time. Here, we will have
the opportunity to see right away how the bigger vision is working.
That's an exciting prospect."